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chapter thirteen

Providence Station

Transverse, non-congruent


Their request for support ended up being redirected to Commissioner Schröder due to standing orders for all Gordian personnel to notify him of major changes to the case. This led to Isaac providing the update to and requesting support from the man in charge of the entire division.

Schröder took immediate and decisive measures to isolate Charm Quark, both physically and in the abstract. He ordered the docking umbilical sealed and a Red Knight assault mech—part of the station’s emergency response force—posted at the entrance. Abstract Gordian agents shut down the Quark’s connection to the station’s infostructure and placed all virtual access points under constant surveillance.

An armed team of ten Gordian agents—all synthoids—boarded the Quark and attempted to locate the missing drone, but found only an empty charging berth where the drone should have been. They then proceeded to search the entire ship, taking a full inventory of construction drones and cross-checking their findings against official project records.

They confirmed only one drone was missing.

In response to that finding, Schröder ordered his agents to sweep the station, a tedious and time-consuming task to be sure, made even more difficult by the station’s many infostructure blind spots. Meanwhile, Isaac and the others proceeded to the docking umbilical to continue their own work.

Isaac stepped up to the Red Knight. The mech featured a broad, armored torso that tapered at the bottom into a compact graviton thruster. A cluster of sensor lenses adorned its head, and an assortment of weapon systems—both lethal and nonlethal—weighed heavily on its forearms and shoulders.

“Detective Isaac Cho and company here to board the Charm Quark.” He pinged the mech with his SysPol badge.

“Identity confirmed, Detective,” replied the mech’s nonsentient program. “Your team may board the ship.”

The mech floated aside, pressing its bulk against the wall to allow them through. The pressure door split open, and Isaac and Susan headed inside, followed by Gilbert and his small army of forensic drones.

Abstract windows along the umbilical’s opaque walls provided a view of the industrial vessel. Four spherical sections comprised Charm Quark’s main body, arranged in a diamond formation and joined by cylindrical sections and structural supports. The hull was colored in a checkerboard of teals and grays with the company and ship name displayed prominently. The umbilical connected to the smallest of the four spheres—only five stories tall—which contained the vessel’s control centers and crew accommodations.

The chronometric storm continued to rage beyond the docked vessel, the sleet of chronotons battering against the station’s protective field. Countless flickers and snaps of light played across the entire view, their subtle nature downplaying the colossal energies at war within the dark emptiness of the transverse. A thick ribbon of energy crackled to life, streaking from one end of the “sky” to the other, and then dispersed just as quickly into thousands of winking motes.

The station-side shutter closed, and the path into the ship’s interior opened. A woman stood just inside the threshold, her hands clasped tightly in front of her and a nervous smile on her lips. Silver strands chased through her brown hair, which poured over the shoulders of her teal-and-gray business suit.

“Detective Cho,” she greeted him with only a slight waver in her voice. “My name is Renata Beltrame. I’m the project manager responsible for this vessel’s operation, and for the fulfillment of our company’s scope during the Providence Project.” Her eyes darted across the people and drones behind him. “I understand you wished to speak with me?”

“Among other things. Have our colleagues in the Gordian Division informed you of the situation?”

“Uh, no. Not really, no. They just sort of showed up and stormed through the place looking for”—she shrugged helplessly—“something. I would’ve asked what all this was about, but it seemed best to stay out of their way and not make a fuss. They had a lot of guns.”

“I see,” Isaac replied with a brief frown.

He understood Gordian and Themis were two very different divisions, but the least they could’ve done was explain to the crew why agents were tearing through their ship like it was the end of a universe.

“We’re here concerning the recent temp-death of Director Shigeki,” he said, and Beltrame nodded solemnly.

“I figured it must’ve been something like that. What else could stir up Gordian this bad? Not sure why they came here, though.”

“We have reason to believe the bomb used in the attack was produced on this ship, and one of your drones—which remains unaccounted for—brought it onto the station.”

Beltrame’s eyes widened, and her one hand gripped the other so fiercely its knuckles turned white.

“Agent Cantrell and I would like to ask you some questions. Meanwhile, Specialist Gilbert will need access to your drones, printers, and related infrastructure. Do you see any issues with this?”

“What?” Beltrame squeaked. “Uh, no. No problem. Sorry, but I had no idea! The bomb came from here? Whoever did this couldn’t be one of our employees!”

“That remains to be seen,” Isaac replied neutrally.

“I’ll get to work, then.” Gilbert hurried past Isaac, and his drones floated after him.

Beltrame watched him until he disappeared down the corridor. She turned to Isaac, trying to mask her visible worry, but only succeeded in producing another nervous smile.

“Is there somewhere we can talk in private?” Isaac asked.

“Uh, sure. Just follow me.”

She led them through the ship’s interior to what appeared to be a small break room, complete with (surprisingly cheap-looking) beverage and food printers. She waited until everyone was inside, then palmed the door shut and conjured a DO NOT DISTURB sign with a wave of her hand.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Detective, how serious is the situation?”

“Very. Hardware aboard this ship has been implicated in a deadly transdimensional crime. Understandably, we’ll need your complete cooperation if we’re to get to the bottom of this.”

“Of course, of course. You’ll have it. It’s just . . . ”

“Just what?”

“I think I need some coffee.” Beltrame opened the beverage printer’s menu. “Would either of you like some?”

“No, thank you,” Isaac replied.

Susan shook her head.

“Well, I need some caffeine. Good grief! The bomb was printed on our ship?”

“So it would seem.” Isaac opened his case notes. “I’d like to go over a few basic questions with you, if you don’t mind. First, what is CounterGravCorp’s role in this project?”

“We’re a subcontractor handling some of the Mitchell Group’s project scope. Mostly gravitic plate installation.”

“Isn’t the Mitchell Group a competitor of yours?”

“Under normal circumstances, yes, but the past year hasn’t been kind to them. They lost a lot of their exotic matter production when the Dynasty nuked the L5 industrial cluster. MG could have dropped some of their open contracts on force majeure grounds; no one would’ve batted an eye if they had, but they decided to sub out any work they couldn’t handle in-house.”

Her coffee finished with a ding.

“You sure you don’t want some?”

“Is the arrangement between the Mitchell Group and CounterGravCorp similar for this project?”

“It is.” Beltrame took a sip. “Unlike us, MG has worked for Gordian in the past, so we were at a disadvantage in the bidding process from day one. No surprise they received such a large share of the exotic matter work. But it turned out they still don’t have the capacity needed to meet Gordian’s schedule. So they subbed out some of the less glamorous work, like the gravity plating.”

“How did you become involved?”

“Well, like I said, CounterGravCorp doesn’t have a history of doing work for Gordian, but I managed a few projects for the Antiquities Rescue Trust, back when they still had time machines and hadn’t yet become political poison. That made me as good a fit as any for this project.”

“Are you aware of any unusual activity amongst the ship’s crew?”

“Unusual?” She glanced off to the side and rolled the cup between her palms for a few moments. “No. Nothing comes to mind.” She took another sip.

“Any unexplained or unusual behavior amongst your drones or other equipment?”

“Sorry, Detective. Nothing I’m aware of.”

“Have you ever met Director Csaba Shigeki of the DTI?”

“A few times in project meetings. I don’t think we ever discussed much beyond the schedule. We’ve mostly worked with Hinnerkopf and Andover-Chen, and even then, MG is the primary point of contact.”

“Has any member of your crew ever expressed a desire to harm Director Shigeki or the Admin?”

“To the best of my knowledge, no. Not even in jest.”

“Do you know how the bomb was produced or how it was brought onto the station?”

“Not a clue.”

“Then, I thank you for your time.” Isaac closed his notes. “We’ll contact you if we need anything else.”

* * *

Isaac and Susan joined Gilbert an hour later in Charm Quark’s computer core. Racks of densely packed infosystem nodes stretched from floor to ceiling, arranged in ten aisles with just enough space between them for a single person to slip through. Heat radiated off the computational engines, and a constant stream of frigid air blew down through vents in the ceiling. Isaac wasn’t sure if he should switch his uniform’s comfort features to hot or cold.

Forensics drones floated down the aisles, their pseudopods interrogating one node after another. Isaac spotted Gilbert at the back of the rightmost aisle with Kikazaru hovering above his shoulder and a drone near his feet with two pseudopods out.

Gilbert waved them over with a quirked smile.

“This ship’s infostructure is a freaking hydra!” he complained in security chat. “Every time I chase down one oddity, another one rears its ugly head.”

“Have you been able to make sense of it?” Isaac pressed his back against one of the racks to give Susan some room. She scooched in next to him.

“Sort of,” Gilbert replied, “which is why I called you over. The funny thing is there’re signs of tampering all over the place, and not just where we expected to find them. I’ve spotted signs of covert editing in”—he began counting with his fingers—“the printer command queue, the printer pattern database, drone maintenance, drone scheduling, inventory management. You name it, there’s probably something fishy going on with it.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Susan asked. “Doesn’t that mean we’re on the right trail?”

“You’d think,” Gilbert said, “but here’s the issue. In all that mess, I’m still missing two things: how the rogue conveyor drone got its orders and where the bomb came from.”

“What sort of discrepancies are you finding?” Isaac asked.

“Not sure yet. I’m conducting my first sweep at a high level, finding inconsistencies like mismatched time stamps in the file metadata. Stuff like that alerts me to the potential for undocumented changes, but what’s changed will take me longer to parse out.”

“Have you come across any unaccounted printer runtime?” Isaac asked.

“Actually, I’ve run into the complete opposite. There seems to be too little total runtime to account for everything produced by the Quark’s printers.”

“Too little?” Isaac’s arms came up to fold across his chest as if on autopilot, but he brushed against Susan. “Oh, sorry.”

“No worries.” She gave him an abbreviated shrug. “It’s cramped in here.”

“And uncomfortable.” Gilbert rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t know my skin could both freeze and cook at the same time.”

“So, the bomb’s origins are still up in the air,” Isaac summarized. “What about the drone?”

“Its logs are fake for the last six days, at least. Supposedly, it came back to the ship six days ago and reported enough issues to be taken out of service. But that didn’t actually happen, except in the logs. Weird thing is, I didn’t find any time stamp errors in those specific drone logs.”

“What does that mean?” Susan asked.

“Not sure. Could be whoever is behind this was extra careful covering that part of the data trail.”

“But if that’s the case,” Isaac said, “then why all the sloppy revisions elsewhere?”

“Can’t say. At least not yet.”

Susan sighed. “Sounds like we’re still in a wait-and-see holding pattern.”

“Not entirely.” Gilbert flashed a crafty smile. “I called you two here for a reason, after all. You’re not leaving empty-handed.”

“What do you have for us?” Isaac asked.

“One of the things you detectives love most—a name. Senior Drone Technician Paula Coble. I’ve traced several of these unexplained edits back to a user account, and her name popped up every time.” Gilbert sent Coble’s information to the case folder.

“Could be someone else using her account,” Susan noted.

“But it’s a place to start,” Isaac said. “Anything else?”

“Not at the moment, Detective. Should have more for you in a few hours.”

“Then we’ll leave you to it.” Isaac shuffled to the side then opened a comm window.

“Yes, Detective?” Beltrame responded a few seconds later. “Something I can do for you?”

“I need to speak with Drone Tech Paula Coble.”

* * *

Isaac could already tell Coble was a poorly concealed ball of anxiety ready to burst. One half of her head was completely shaven, and she wore her long, dark hair draped over that side. She played with that hair, wrapping it around a finger one way and then the other while she chewed on her bottom lip.

“Hi.” She gave him a brief, forced smile as he sat down across from her.

Isaac denied her eye contact, focusing instead on opening his case notes and tabbing over to the list of discrepancies Gilbert had flagged. Coble’s visible unease worsened, and she wrapped her hair around one finger tight enough for the fingertip to blanch.

“Hey,” Coble said to Susan, who did meet her gaze, but it was with a cold, penetrating glare. Susan could have pinned a Red Knight to the wall with those eyes, and Coble looked away almost immediately, her gaze settling upon the LENS hovering nearby.

Isaac judged the woman to be sufficiently “primed” and finished adjusting his virtual screens. He sat forward.

“Please state your name and occupation for the record.”

“What’s this about? All Beltrame said was you wanted to ask a few questions.” Her eyes darted to Susan’s Peacekeeper uniform and then back to him.

“Your name and occupation, please.”

She huffed out a breath. “Paula Coble. I’m a drone tech.”

“And what does that role entail?”

“I give the drones their orders.”

“Can you be more detailed?”

“Why?”

Isaac finally met her eyes and wondered if she even knew she was twirling her hair.

“Please provide a more detailed explanation of your work.”

“Fine. Whatever.” She let go of her hair and stuffed her hands underneath her armpits. “I take the construction orders the engineers give me and convert them into programs for the drones. Sometimes, when the work is real finicky, I’ll take direct control of a drone or three, but that doesn’t happen often.”

“Has direct control been necessary within the past week?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Has it been necessary? Yes or no?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“When did you last take direct control of a drone?”

“Heck, I don’t keep track of stuff like that.”

“Then give me your best guess of when.”

“Probably a few days ago. What is this about?”

“Why did you need to take direct control?”

“One of the other techs sized a plate segment wrong, and we had to make some adjustments. It was easier to do it manually than to write a new program. Are you going to tell me what this is about or what?”

“Are there any other recent examples of you controlling the drone?”

“Probably not. I don’t remember any.”

Isaac opened the details on one of the log edits Gilbert found.

“Do you have access to this ship’s industrial printers?”

“Of course I do.”

“What do you use that access for?”

“Replacement parts, mostly.”

“What else?”

“Sometimes I need special tools or attachments for the drones. Depends what the engineers have us working on.”

“Have you placed any special orders recently?”

She hesitated, then shook her head. “No, nothing special.”

“Nothing special, or nothing at all?”

“I might’ve used them a little, I guess.”

“How much is ‘a little’?”

“I don’t remember.” She shrugged her shoulders, her hands still stuck in her armpits. “You can’t expect me to recall every little printing job. I can barely keep up with the work as it is!”

“How many times have you used the ship’s printers over the past week?”

“Maybe once or twice a day.”

“Then”—Isaac ran his finger down Gilbert’s list—“why do the ship logs show you accessing the printers over sixty times in the past week alone?”

“I . . . ” Coble’s lip trembled.

“And not just the printers, but just about every part of the ship’s infostructure show signs of your digital fingerprints. Why?”

“But that’s . . . ”

“Why have you been hacking the ship’s records?”

“But I’ve . . . ” She trailed off. “No, you got this all wrong. I haven’t been hacking anything!”

“I find that highly doubtful.” Isaac placed a forearm on the table and leaned forward. “Earlier, you asked what this was about, so allow me to explain. Yesterday, a bomb went off in the station.”

“I know that. Everyone does, but so what? Why treat me like I’m some sort of criminal?”

“Because the bomb came from this ship.”

Coble’s eyes turned as wide as saucers, and she shrank back into her seat.

“Not only that,” Isaac continued, “but a drone from this ship delivered it. A drone that is currently unaccounted for. A drone that you, as a senior technician, had full access to.”

Coble’s head quavered in a little side-to-side shake.

“The murder weapon and the means of delivery both came from here, and when we tried to follow the trail, what did we find? Mountains of discrepancies stretching as far as the eye can see, all plastered with your fingerprints.”

“No . . . ” Coble squeaked.

“Yes,” Susan cut in. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in right now?”

Isaac leaned back and glanced over at his colleague, eager to see how she handled this. Susan had developed a knack for playing the “Admin thug” over the past six months and for sensing when best to crank up the pressure.

“No?” Coble managed to squeak out.

“Then allow me to explain.” Susan removed her peaked cap and pointed at the symbol on the front. “Do you know why it’s a shield?”

Coble gave her that twitchy side-to-side headshake again.

“Because we Peacekeepers are the buffer between civilians and the murderous degenerates who want to destroy our way of life. Ideally, when the knife in the dark strikes, it strikes us and not the innocents we protect. We take the hit so that others don’t have to.”

Susan fitted her cap back on.

“But that also means we’re the ones equipped to confront such monsters.” Susan leaned in, and Coble tried to shrink back further. “We don’t take attacks kindly or lightly. And if we find anyone from SysGov involved in the attack, you better believe we’re going to push for their extradition so that justice may be served. Our justice. Admin justice. From the most dangerous mastermind”—Susan tilted her head forward ever so slightly—“to the lowliest abettor. Every. Last. One of them.”

Coble had very nearly finished her transformation from human being to a puddle of pure, quivering apprehension. She lowered her head, tearful eyes squeezed shut.

Isaac glanced over to his partner and gave her an approving nod. She nodded back.

“Now, Coble,” he began. “Let’s go over this one more—”

“Beltrame made me do it!” Coble blurted.

“Made you do what?”

“Alter the ship’s records!”

“Which records?”

“Stuff related to the project. Materials for the printers, components delivered, things like that. She gave me the new files, and I swapped them out for her. That’s it!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! I just do what I’m told!”

“Did you cover up the printing of the bomb?”

“No!”

“Did you arrange for a drone to deliver a bomb or similar object to the station?”

“No!”

“Are you or anyone you know involved in a conspiracy to commit murder on the station?”

“Good grief, no!”

“Are you lying to me again?”

“No, no, I swear it!” She raised her knees up to her chest and hugged them.

Susan stood up, a hand resting on the prog-steel cuffs on her belt. Isaac nodded for her to proceed, and she rounded the table and grabbed Coble’s unresisting wrists.

“Paula Coble,” Isaac said, “you are under arrest for conspiracy to falsify records related to a government contract and for lying to an officer of the law. We’ll sort out any other charges later.” He faced the LENS. “Cephalie?”

She appeared atop the drone, her coat and hat the deep blue of SysPol.

“Take the LENS, find Beltrame, and arrest her.”



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